Comment

Henry Kissinger is a prodigiously intelligent, articulate, talented witty, captivating & imposing man...he is not mean-spirited, he seems drawn to telling the truth, & he wants to serve his country well. He also appears to have a historical vision, shared by the Pres.: that by maintaining our military preeminence & by standing fast wherever we think we are challenged, as we thought we were in Indo-China, we may avoid nuclear confrontation with Russia & China & preserve a relatively peaceful world for decades. Now he has come before the Senate Foreign Relations Comm. as the President's choice for Sec. of State... There was uneasiness in the air... If the Pres. had an alter ego on the world state it was K. Together, for 5 years, they dictated our foreign policy. To confirm K. as Sec. of State was to ratify what he had done, and what the Pres. had done. Americans are grateful for their establishing our relations with China & improving our relations with Russia. Lists the undesirable things: planning the undisclosed bombing of Cambodia in '69 & '70; using Am. air power to support the invasion of Laos in '71; "tilting" in favor of Pakistan in the India-Pakistan War; in '72 mining and blockading N. Vietnamese harbors; the '72 Xmas bombing of N. Vietnam. All this was done in secrecy without congressional consent. The senators were, in effect, being asked to ratify a series of actions that should never have taken place without their approval & that most of them abhorred & protested... Last Fri. K. gave the senators assurances that he would mend his ways... The senators were presented with a dilemma... One could only look on in sorrow as the senators, the Pres. & K. faced one another in these tragic circumstances.